MIDI HD – the new standard!

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MIDI is now 30 years old an initiated by Dave Smith – the first ever synths to talk where the SCI Prophet 600 and the Roland Jupiter 6. so they never really tried to make a new MIDI which is said not to fully replace MIDI but enhance it where needed. the problem is – do you need to throw things away because they have one MIDI HD or just no MIDI 1.0 connections since the new thing is a protocol not a 5 pin plug or even something new or different — in fact it is more a protocoll tunneled over Ethernet or/and USB.

so in fact any USB synth/device may upgrade the OS to allow HD commands and it will be fully compliant to MIDI HD since it is USB or Ethernet that is needed, DIN 5pin jacks will be and stay at MIDI 1.0 (for ever). Note that any USB MIDI Synth now may be MIDI HD labelled and they might consider to leave out the classic DIN jacks – in that case you’d need an interface to translate and scale down to low resolution. Since 2 types are allowed to be marked „MIDI“ you may come across some more problems then, but you no longer need in/out/thru in favour of just one connection.

‘HD Protocol’ Features:

Backward compatibility with MIDI 1.0

Plug & Play network connectivity via USB & Ethernet

Thousands of Channels for handling large complex systems

massive number of hi-res controllers and parameters for channels, groups and even individual notes, for unrivalled precision and adaptability to new controller technologies

Precise Pitch Control & Articulation messages for expanded expressivity – so maybe not just note on/off the „key“ style in favour of breath and other controls like sax/brass that needs more

IT IS NOT THE NEW STANDARD – it is just compatible and therefore just that! it is technically not identical since MIDI has hardware specs – but some musical instruments (etc) may not even need the new „standard“ – so let’s check MMA’s site for HD news.

to me this is a long awaited thing I really appreciate – I was dreaming of a scalable self explaining (in terms of names and structure) hi-res version with a lot more controller channels for any additive experiment etc and suitable for realtime control – well there is nothing like „it does know about a synth’s structure or it’s parameters“ as it seems but it might to the rest and – really important – it has a time stamped signature so the timing will improve a lot with that – that’s where emagic ended up with the AMT8 and Unitor8 (mk2) but they (of course) could not override the MIDI standard itself but hat the best solution to timing ever since – (and apple bought it and threw it away since they didn’t want to sell audio hardware..)

features: •note attached data like timbre, pressure of something on something within the note is playing •MPE •more channels (more than 16) •faster •simpler NRPN Controller cascades •special „what purpose“ request handshake negotiation to get the info about the other MIDI machines attached